The American Medical Association is distributing leaflets in its
members' waiting rooms that ask "Is the Clinton proposal for
health reform good for you and your family? You need to think about
these 10 questions." Heading the list is "Will I be able to
see my own doctor?" My guess is that this will prove to be an
effective tactic.

Clinton could have avoided the problem by adopting the Canadian
plan which, of course, lets patients choose their own doctor.
Ironically, the insurance companies, the fear of whose wrath apparently
led the Clintons not to go for the Canadian plan, are also now planning
to use the "you can't choose your own doctor" argument
against the very plan the Clinton administration adopted to avoid making
them angry.

The AMA used another clever lobbying ploy when it hosted a
three-day weekend at the Greenbrier for congressional staffers who will
help shape the health legislation. "Interest groups often use posh
getaways to woo senators and representatives, but," points out The
Wall Street Journal's Timothy Noah, "the lavishness of the
Greenbrier [minimum rate $425 per night] as a setting to court
congressional staff is extravagant even by Washington's somewhat
jaded standards. Its use in this case points up not only congressional
staffers' importance in affecting legislation, but also the
enormous stakes in the coming health-care debate."

It appears that the lobbies against health care reform are covering
every base. They've even hired Paul Tsongas, the man who gave
Clinton the most trouble in last year's Democratic primaries. The
opposition is so strong that the only hope I see for the cause of reform
is for the media to do a good enough job reporting the case for change
to balance the propaganda that will flow from the AMA and the insurance
and pharmaceutical companies. And the chances that the media will do
that are slim indeed. [See "Dead On Arrival," by Ton Hamburger
and Ted Marmor, in this issue.]...

If you want to see the tip of a federal iceberg, consider the U.S.
Embassy in Grenada. For three American employees, there are six cars,
sex blenders, nine toasters, 29 tables, and 49 chairs. Multiply that by
all the military and diplomatic posts we maintain abroad and you get
some idea of how the U.S. treasury might benefit by putting in a call to
Sonny's Surplus....

And if you want to get an idea of the efficiency with which all
these posts operate, consider the case of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the
Muslim cleric with the predisposition for befriending people who like to
plant explosive devices in public places. To begin with, the State
Department failed to add his name to its suspected terrorist list for
seven years after his proclivities had been clearly manifested. Even
after his name was added to the list, the Sheik made seven applications
for visas, only one of which was rejected on security grounds. On that
occasion, the State Department did notify the INS, but the INS failed to
catch Rahman either entering or leaving the country. He received at
least two other visas to the United States after his name was on both
the State Department and INS lists. Finally, while the INS office in New
York was trying to deport the Sheik, another INS office in New Jersey
was giving him permanent residence status

Incidentally, on all six occasions when the U.S. consulates failed
to spot the Sheik on the terrorist list, the culprit was as CIA undercover agent....

Another classic tale of government comes from Chicago where it
seems that, hours before Mayor Richard Daley was to escort Health and
Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala on a tour of the Ida B. Wells housing development, crews arrived to clean the streets and spray silver
paint on the rusty fences. A van that offers free immunization was
rerouted so it could offer a backdrop to TV cameras. Colorful balloons
and a trampoline were provided to attract children and bring appropriate
smiles to their faces. Cops were there to keep the gang members away.

"We're not stupid," one mother from the project told
John Kass of the Chicago Tribune. "Once Daley and that lady from
Washington go, the gangbanging will start again. But they won't be
here to see that. They'll be in their own homes, watching
themselves on TV."....

Richard Reeves' unsparing but fair new book on JFK's
presidency reminds me that even though this government is all too often
the depressing joke that the foregoing items have portrayed, it can do
great things - from the NASA of the sixties to Robert Kennedy's
Justice Department to the Peace Corps I was privileged to be part of.
Earlier in my lifetime, during the Roosevelt administration, such
agencies as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the wartime Office of
Price Administration provided shining examples of effective government.
And of course, the post office, at least through the thirties, forties,
and fifties, demonstrated that government could provide an essential
service efficiently and effectively. So government can do the job but,
as the sad stories that begin this column and the subsequent decline of
some of the agencies I've just described illustrate, it won't
work if we don't mind the store. We have to make sure that it
attracts the kind of worker that came to Washington under the New Deal
and the New Frontier and that it has the kind of accountability it had
when your postmaster knew he could be fired if you didn't get your
mail on time....

Last August a 24 year old man from Rockville, Maryland, was killed
by a reckless driver who was going 60 miles per hour in a 45 miles per
hour zone and sheared off the side of the victim's car. The driver
was an alcoholic who had previously been cited 12 times for speeding and
had had his license revoked five times in Massachusetts. Yet he was
allowed to drive in Maryland.

We see the same problem in medicine. Repeatedly, doctors whose
licenses have been revoked in one states are permitted to practice in
another. Don't these facts begin to make you suspect the current
system of licensing that permits highway drunks and operating room butchers to move from state to state with impunity? Why not have
national licensing?....

Further evidence of Clinton's terrible slowness on
appointments comes from the Congressional Research Service, which found
that by July 4 of his first year John Kennedy had filled 93 percent of
the top Pentagon posts, and Jimmy Carter had named 76 percent.
Clinton's score is a miserable 33 percent....

One reason the Clinton economic plan had a rough time in Congress
is that it was consistently described in media leads as raising taxes.
That the increase in income tax would fall solely on the affluent was
usually mentioned far lower in the story, which on television often
means not at all. The cover of the August issue of Money magazine, for
example, supplied the Republicans with this slogan: "Beat the
Biggest Tax Hike Ever." Although The New York Times later revealed
"the biggest ever" was a lie, it was a lie that gave Bill
Clinton fits.

The Wall Street Journal even contended in its Notable &
Quotable section that "Support for redistributive economics has
never rallied a majority; even in the thirties, polls showed that
Franklin Roosevelt's redistribution was not a vote getter."

Doubtless those polls used the same scientific techniques that
produced the Literary Digest poll that predicted an FDR defeat in 1936.

Actually, after Roosevelt came out in 1935 with a plan to use
taxation to secure "a wider distribution of wealth," he won
the presidency by a tremendous landslide, sweeping all states but Maine
and Vermont.

If there was any American who was even more beloved than FDR during
that era it was the comedian Will Rogers. Interestingly, he too wanted
to "arrange some way of getting more equal distribution of wealth
in the country."

Will Rogers fascinates me for other reasons. He was, at least in
his public persona, absolutely innocent of the snobbery we have endured
from the fifties on as more and more Americans try to emulate the rich.
He was Huck Finn grown up, and that was what the average American
aspired to be back then. As one contemporary puts it in Ben
Yagoda's fine new biography of Rogers, "Wise in years, young
in humor and love of life, shrewd but gentle, he is what most Americans
think other Americans are like."

To some extent Henry Fonda and James Stewart were able to carry on
his tradition, but since they too have faded away, there is now a danger
we will forget that Huck Finn is what we are at our best, and that is a
very great loss for this country.

The fact that there are fewer Huck Finns around means that there is
less support for redistribution economics today. Another factor is that
in the thirties, 90 percent of the people were getting the shaft where
today the figure is 68 percent. These are the people with family income
of under $50,000. But they are still a clear majority and I am convinced
they will rally to the cause if Clinton does a better job of explaining
and the media does a better job of reporting. The discouraging thing
here is that so many of the major media stars are now in the affluent
class and are tempted to identify with its interest. For example, my old
friend Mickey Kaus, who argued in The End of Equality that
redistribution is a lost cause, just bought a house in Georgetown where
he's going to find a lot of folks who agree with him....

Another example of the errors of the media (and politicians as
well) are the figures typically cited on the increase in the national
debt under Clinton's proposals. Everyone says essentially "it
will go up by $1 trillion over five years."

Yet anyone who bothered to look at page 33 of Clinton's April
8 budget knows the news is worse. (And if Republicans and Perot bothered
to look, they'd find better ammunition than they already have.)
There one finds that the administration proposed adding $1.4 trillion to
the national debt over four years. (What's half a trillion between
friends?) That's compared to Bush's $1.53 trillion over four
years. Anyone who's watched budget forecasts knows this means that
with a little bad luck, Clinton will end up being the biggest-borrowing
president in the history - not a good thing to run on in '96 when
you've racked up this debt with broad tax increases and without the
fig leaf of divided government.

The reason people get it wrong is that they usually add up the
projected annual deficits and think that's the number. Of course,
these annual deficits don't represent the increase in the national
debt (gross debt - the $4+trillion number our kids are on the hook for),
because they don't include the trust fund borrowing.

Republicans should argue this way - and of course will, when it
becomes plainer. What's amazing is that Ross Perot can't get
these numbers right. You'd think he could hire someone to look at
the budget! David Broder's tough columns critiquing the
administration early on for not doing more have packed that much more
punch with the higher number and the argument it permits. The only
journalist who's gotten it right is Jonathan Rauch in The National
Journal in an excellent piece called "Clintonomics - The
Sequel."

The point is that such facts are easy to find with simple effort.
Journalists should not get it wrong. And Ross and the Republicans would
be wise to get it right too, since it will prompt the administration to
turn to the needed budget round two earlier when they realize that being
the biggest borrowers in history won't look good in '96....

The most novel explanation I have heard of Vincent Foster's
suicide comes from Inside Washington's Carl Rowan, who told
viewers:

"You get a man who's very close to the president, a
confidant, his head is full of our most secret information, and because
of the excesses of a John Sununu he can't get a car ride
home." In other words the suicide would not have occurred, or, in
Rowan's words, "we would at least have some idea of what
happened" if only the White House still provided drivers for
officials of Foster's rank. This takes me back eleven years ago to
a time when I was on this same show and made some anti-perk remarks only
to be rebuked off-camera by Elizabeth Drew, who allowed that she liked
to be picked up by a limousine and by Rowan, who said he refused to fly
unless it was first class.

We all like comfort, but the problem with the Drew-Rowan attitude
among journalists is that they let their own taste for luxury encourage
Washington official to insulate themselves from the problems of the rest
of us, like having to take the bus or subway or hail a cab at rush hour
- finding generous health insurance, not coincidentally, is a cinch if
you work for the White House, Congress, or the major media...

A Johns Hopkins study of depression in 104 different professions
found the highest proportion of victims was among lawyers. This is one
reason why I am constantly warning young people not to go into the law
unless they truly feel a real calling, or enjoy actual practice. If such
tests were strictly applied by all lawyers, the ranks of the profession
would be instantly cut by at least two-thirds.

According to Amiram Elwork, the coauthor of a recent research study
"Lawyers in Distress," a very large proportion of lawyers
"are either very dissatisfied with their careers, suffer from some
form of mental illness, or have been problem drinkers. Today's
lawyers work in conditions that are remarkably similar to the |sweat
shops' blue collar workers endured several generations age. Such
law firms push productivity to the limit of human capacity and
constantly function in a crisis mode."

The result, Elwork told The Washington Times, is that "mental
illness and substance abuse are leading causes of malpractice suits and
ethical disciplinary actions against attorneys."

In the fifties, I was fortunate enough to work in a small firm in a
small city with some non-workaholic partners and a variety of clients
who represented a cross-section of the community and its problems. But I
still found that half the work was either boring - imagine what
researching a land title is like - or even when interesting, as in
trying cases, was often for causes of marginal merit. I was much happier
in public service in the state legislature of West Virginia and with the
federal government here in Washington, work that I have tried to
continue with this magazine.

Of course, there are a few lawyers who love their work and make a
valuable contribution to society. But most would be happier doing
something else. Not only would they be better off but so would the rest
of society because many of the unhappy lawyers are bright and able
people who could do great good in other kinds of work....

Did you happen to see the story in The New York Times about the
third-year medical student who after working his 15th straight hour fell
asleep at the wheel and was crushed to death in an accident caused by
his driving the wrong way on an exit ramp? The abuse of medical
students, interns, and residents is even worse than that which young
lawyers have to endure.

There are two reasons: (1) Older doctors want their youthful
brethren to endure the same hardships they did, and (2) Hospitals profit
from having slave labor. There is a simple solution: Have older doctors
with hospital privileges do night duty just a couple of times a year for
modest pay. There are enough senior doctors - meaning those past
residency - to free the young from the ghastly burden they have
today....

We have often tried to explain that, although court dockets may be
overcrowded, American judges have displayed a remarkable ability to keep
their own work schedules on what might be charitably called the light
side. Consider that the United States Supreme Court Justices have to be
there for the approximately 40 days set aside for oral arguments and the
roughly 30 Friday morning on which they meet to discuss cases. That
leaves the justices 295 days to schedule as they please. Justice Scalia
chose to use the freedom by taking 20 trips in 1992 alone. Among his
destinations, according to Linda Greenhouse of The New York Times, were
Venice, Innsbruck, Oslo, and Genoa.

Incidentally, each trip was financed by a non-profit institution,
which may help explain why the law is so tender in its treatment of
these organizations, letting them get away with the kind of abuses that
recently have been reported about one Blue Cross chapter after
another....

In hindsight, it seems clear to me that we should have provided
enough military aid to the Bosnian Muslims to give them a fair chance
against the Serbs. Cyrus Vance and David Owen were guilty of grave error
last year when they counseled against such aid on the grounds that it
would keep the Bosnians away from the peace table. It was the lack of
such aid that kept the Serbs away from the table. They knew they could
win more by their unfair military advantage than they could through
serious negotiations. The only time they showed a sign of reasonableness
was in March when Clinton threatened them with both air strikes and aid
to Bosnia. They were falling all over themselves in their rush to the
peace table until our NATO partners rejected Clinton's pleas and
the Serbs returned to shelling Sarajevo....

Morton Mintz, who I believe will rank as one of the greatest
investigative journalists of our time, recently revealed that the ACLU had taken $500,000 from the tobacco companies while the ACLU was
publicly arguing, supposedly on the basis of the purest principle, that
restrictions on cigarette advertising could violate the First Amendment.
The ACLU had not revealed that it was on the take from the merchant of
death, a.k.a. tobacco companies, on the grounds - you're going to
love this - hat it had to protect the companies' right of privacy.

How could anyone seriously believe that advertising of harmful
products is protected by the First Amendment? Obviously the newspapers
and magazines that fatten their profits with cigarette advertising have
a reason for wanting to cloak their sins under the righteous mantle of
free speech. And so do all the lawyers who represent or hope to
represent them. When you add all of those lawyers to the lawyers who
work for the tobacco conglomerates you can see that an impressive array
of legal talent has a stake in peddling the notion that James Madison
really intended to protect R.J.R.'s right to use Joe Camel to lure
children to smoke.

If you want to know how wrong these guys are, read Democracy and
the Problem of Free Speech, a brilliant book by Cass R. Sunstein,
professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School, in
which he explains why commercial speech should not be accorded the same
protection that we should give to political discussion.

Like Alexander Meiklejohn, another great First Amendment theorist,
Sunstein believes that political speech is the heart of the First
Amendment. It is this liberty that is key to all others and for this
reason I have told our advertising people that, although I would not
accept any advertising that glamorized smoking, I would reluctantly
accept an ad for the Tobacco Institute saying that tobacco companies
have the constitutional right to advertise. That would be a political
argument that I would not have the right to suppress.

On the other hand, I have taken great pride in refusing to run all
ads that attempt to persuade people to smoke. I wish more publications
would join me as the Seattle Times recently has. Unfortunately most
papers and magazines accept, even solicit, cigarette advertising. I
can't understand how decent people like the Grahams and Sulzbergers
can live with this practice. The Post, by the way, ran the Mintz report
on page A13, which is just the kind of placement it gave to his many
exposes of corporate malfeasance during his long career at the paper. In
defense of the Post, it did pay Mintz a salary and it did run his
stories. But the frequent obscurity of their placement in the paper
betrayed a lack of enthusiasm for truth that might offend
advertisers....

I am disturbed to learn that 70 percent of the 1,400 national
service volunteers who gathered in San Francisco from all across the
nation in June turned out to be black. This is a strong indication that
what we're going to get from Clinton is not a service but a poverty
program. I support programs designed to help needy youth, but they
should not be confused with service programs whose purpose is not to
give people jobs but to ask them to give of themselves....

The long distance phone companies have learned a great secret of
the monopoly game. Even though one company doesn't have exclusive
control of the market, the happy result of monopoly can be achieved by
unwritten agreements to keep overall prices up while appearing to
compete with clever ads that promise dramatic savings - savings that
just happen to be unrealizable for the average customer. It usually
turns out that you can only save the promised 50 percent if you make a
hundred calls to Nome, Alaska, and Anniston, Alabama, every month....

COPYRIGHT 1993 Washington Monthly Company
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.